Gap loses personal information on 800,000 people

Another wonderful data breach in the news, this one affecting a huge number of people who applied for jobs at Gap Inc. Gap, a clothes retailer, apparently keeps job applicants on file for a long while – and in great numbers. A laptop was lifted, and on it was the information for 800,000 applicants. Since job applications often include phone numbers, street addresses, social security numbers and a lot of other goodies, it is prime real estate for an identity thief.

Why would gap, who employs about 152,000 people worldwide, have a single machine with nearly a million people who aren't even employed there on file? It seems odd, but with all the massive data thefts we've seen the past three years it is hardly surprising.

There are no reports yet of the data being “misused” according to Gap.